Conference Presentation, Panel
Women Entrepreneurs: A Dynamic Force in Global Growth
Milken InstituteRick Smith, Jessica Alba, Susan Feldman, Sheila Lirio Marcelo, Alexandra Wilkis Wilson, Debbie Wosskow
- The industry anticipates a gradual shift toward better support for female founders, driven by the potential election of the first female president, the entry of more women into venture capital, and structural changes where funds specifically hire female partners to invest solely in women.
- Despite women starting companies at twice the rate of men, only one out of twelve Series A deals involved female founders last year, a statistic predicted to persist as a structural issue due to investor bias and a lack of understanding regarding female-centric products.
- Care.com expects to continue facing challenges convincing investors that "care" is a viable business rather than a soft issue within a $280 billion total addressable market, with profitability and analyst traction expected to take a few years to achieve.
- The Honest Company plans to embed "give back" components into its business model and provide coding and design skills to girls aged 15 to 17, aiming to influence consumer choices among millennials and increase the future pipeline of female technologists.
- One Kings Lane intends to evolve from a flash sale site into a reliable destination for extended product availability, while simultaneously navigating ongoing difficulties in convincing male VCs who lack understanding of the home decor customer base.
- The sharing economy sector, including companies like Love Home Swap, Airbnb, and Uber, is expected to continue growing as women drive decision-making regarding assets, travel, and home management.
- Susan Lyne advises entrepreneurs to prioritize speed and iteration over waiting for perfection, a strategy deemed essential for success in a rapidly changing world where waiting for all boxes to be checked may inhibit progress.
- The ecosystem faces persistent barriers related to the "old boy network," where investors struggle to understand female-centric products, and single mothers face structural difficulties balancing childcare costs with innovation without specific ecosystem support.
- To realize $28 trillion in economic value, equivalent to the combined size of the US and China economies, female participation in the workplace must increase, requiring women to overcome perceptions of perfectionism and passivity by overprojecting and pushing themselves for visibility.
- Achieving gender parity will require men to act as mentors and champions, as there are currently insufficient women at the top to pull up others, alongside a need to shift the mindset where 42% of entry-level women believe equal parity is unattainable.
- The female ecosystem will improve if successful women publicly back female founders, particularly in the UK seed stage where access to capital is hardest, and if venture capitalists adopt a "moral imperative" alongside the "financial imperative" to invest in female-driven companies.
- Women are predicted to gain a competitive advantage by leveraging their demographic insights, as founders targeting markets where women control over 70% of household income may possess superior market knowledge compared to male founders.
- Venture capitalists who support women and focus on authentic leadership and intuition, which is claimed to be correct 100% of the time, are expected to gain a competitive advantage by identifying opportunities in female-driven companies that others ignore.
- The average age for women to start businesses is in their 30s, often overlapping with raising young children, creating a structural issue where women must "pay to work" to found a business and overcome the fear of failure.
- Future progress depends on eliminating the fear of failing, increasing the number of women founders through dedicated funds, and integrating coding skills into basic school curriculums to address the pipeline gap for female leaders.